This being a quiet Sunday, I've been noodling around the stacks of the geordie library; picking up an item here and there, and finding what I feel to be connections between some of Tolkien's works - bear with me...

To take as a starting point 'The Review of English Studies', Volume I (1925). This academic journal was issued in four parts. Tolkien contributed two articles to this volume - 'Some Contributions to Middle English Lexicography' in pt 2 (April) and 'The Devil's coach-horses' in pt 3 (July). These are interesting for themselves, but also for the fact that they were published at around the time Tolkien was applying for the Chair of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford.

Looking at Tolkien's 'Contributions' article, I see he examined a series of Middle English phrases to be found in the Early English Texts Society ed. of Hali Maidenhad (1922). Prof. Tolkien weighed in straight away by remarking that the title ought to have been 'Meidhad', (and gave his reasons for it) - but what struck me was this phrase:

'medi widh wiccen'.

The EETS translation is, 'deal with witches', but they suggest this ought to be emended to 'medli' - which would neatly form the first incidence of the word 'meddle'; so, 'meddle with witches'. But Tolkien was adamant; for several reasons (not least alliteration) Tolkien reckoned the word _was_ 'medi', which in this case would translate to 'bribe, purchase the service of, witches'.

That was in 1925. Twenty years later, Tolkien had published a tale of a childless lord who purchased the services of a witch - a corrigan, actually - with disastrous results. This was his poem 'The Lay of Aotroun and Itroun', published in 'The Welsh Review' (Vol.IV, no.4, December 1945). Part of this poem runs:

'He heard her voice, and it was cold as echo from the world of old, ere fire was found or iron hewn, when young was mountain under moon.' (p.261)

These lines were themselves echoed some nine years later, in Gandalf's poem about the Ents -

'Ere iron was found or tree was hewn, When young was mountain under moon, Ere ring was found or wrought was woe, It walked the forests long ago.'(TT, 'The Road to Isengard')

And as for 'medi widh wiccan' - well, that comes through in LotR too, of course; but in the 'incorrect' form;

'Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger'.

A lot of folk spend a lot of time looking for Tolkien's 'sources'. Sometimes, he provided his own sources; from both his academic works, and his own fiction. Connections, connections...

The art of translation makes a big difference. For example, I wouldn't consider "bribe" and "purchase the service of" to be synonyms. However, both of those do fit under the more generic umbrella of "meddling" which apparently is disastrous for witches but simply unrecommended for wizards.

I find the fact that Tolkien borrowed lines from an earlier poem of his very interesting.

ere fire was found or iron hewn, when young was mountain under moon (from "The Lay of Aotroun and Itroun")

and

Ere iron was found or tree was hewn, When young was mountain under moon (from TT)

He must have found "mountain under moon" a memorable sound and image. I wonder if he uses it anywhere else? It seems to me that he's working much like the poets who used an oral style in the early Middle Ages: repeating memorable phrases (especially when there's alliteration to bind the phrase together) and using other phrases as a template to fill in with appropriate details for a specific context, like "fire" and "iron" in the Lay which are switched for "iron" and "tree" in The Two Towers, where Ents are concerned.

Ere iron was found or tree was hewn, When young was mountain under moon (The Lord of the Rings, III.8)

ere fire was found or iron hewn, when young was mountain under moon.' (The Lay of Aotroun and Itroun)

Which came first? Which was refashioned for a second usage? The chapter "The Road to Isengard" was published in the 1950s as you say, of course, but it was largely written in mid-1942, according to Hammond and Scull's summary Chronology - three years before the 1945 publication of the Lay. However, the excerpts from the LotR composition drafts that appear in The History of Middle-earth do not include Gandalf's verse about the Ents. As is so often the case, Christopher Tolkien does not take it upon himself to account for every change between the drafts he publishes, and the final version. So we have no indication of when the lines were actually put into The Lord of the Rings - it could have been anytime between 1942 and 1952, it seems. Verlyn Flieger's article on "Poetry in The Lord of the Rings" in the J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia notes that the quatrain is a bit of an orphan. It is given no provenance within Middle-earth, so that it seems to be present only to add some ancientry to Gandalf's lore. She missed the connection you so cleverly spotted, possibly because it was Tom Shippey who wrote the companion article on non-LotR poetry including the Lay of Aotroun and Itroun!

The Lay has an equally obscure background: As Shippey notes, it was originally composed in 1930, but was substantially re-written in ... wait for it ... late 1941 to early 1942, according to Hammond and Scull. I don't know much about this poem, except that Paul Kocher admired it greatly for its blending of medieval models with Tolkien's own poetic style and themes. Kocher's quotes from the poem remind me of the Lay of Leithian, which was written in the same period and has the same meter and rhyme scheme.

So, based on the dates above, the couplet in the Lay of Aotroun and Itroun seems to precede the one from LotR by no less than half a year. No surprise: it was certainly Tolkien's style to borrow from his earlier poetic works when he wanted some verse for his growing epic: besides Tom Bombadil's motifs and Frodo's 'Man in the Moon' song, 'Light as Leaf on Linden Tree' was the source for Aragorn's song of Luthien at Weathertop, and Gimli's poem about Khazad-dum is partly lifted from the Lay of Leithian. So let's say the Lay does take pride of composition, just as you speculated based on the coincidence of publication dates.

However, I have to say I find the second version quite as interesting as the first. The Lay's "Ere fire was found or iron hewn" is a perfectly good image for a "world of old" before Man acquired civilization, although it is rather modernly industrial in its outlook - I miss some kind of Adamistic imagery in this Christian poem. And I think "hewn" is an odd choice of verb for the iron; it seems chosen more for its rhyme than for its suitability. When the subject is switched to the origin of the Ents in the second version, it is now the iron that is not yet "found", and it is trees that are not yet hewn. This fits beautifully the idea that Ents predate the Elves, who only later on used the iron-working skills they learned from the Vala Aule to cut down the Ents' wards, the trees. Hewn is as right for trees as it is wrong for iron, I think.

'The Lay's "Ere fire was found or iron hewn" is a perfectly good image for a "world of old" before Man acquired civilization, although it is rather modernly industrial in its outlook - I miss some kind of Adamistic imagery in this Christian poem.'

I think another 'echo' exists in Tolkien's versions of 'The Hoard', esp. the first two versions, both published under the same name - 'Iumonna Gold Galdre Bewunden:

'Ere Hell was digged, ere the dragons brood Or the dwarves were spawned in dungeons rude; And men there were in few lands That caught some cunning of their mouths and hands...' (The Gryphon, ns4, no.4, January 1923, p.130)

In this version the gold and silver in the hoard originated with the elves (note: no capitalization), but in the second version, it is the 'gods' who sang of silver and gold 'when the moon was new and the sun young'.

'Ere the pit was dug or Hell yawned, Ere dwarf was bred or dragon spawned, There were elves of old, and strong spells In green hills under hollow dells They sang as they wrought many fair things...' (The Oxford Magazine, March 4th, 1937)

Tom Shippey examines these things in his paper 'The versions of "The Hoard"' in his collection of essays 'Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien' (2007)

That seems far to obvious to be accidental. Wonderful! It makes me think
[In reply to]

Can't Post

of Bach "shamelessly" (as it's sometimes put) borrowing from himself, to our great enrichment. It's much the same here, with your Tolkien examples. Luckily, there's no copyright limitation using one's own material--we would be missing out on an awful lot!

'And I think "hewn" is an odd choice of verb for the iron; it seems chosen more for its rhyme than for its suitability. When the subject is switched to the origin of the Ents in the second version, it is now the iron that is not yet "found", and it is trees that are not yet hewn... Hewn is as right for trees as it is wrong for iron, I think.'

- Tolkien uses the word 'hewn' in an interesting way, here -

'But through them there came striding up, roaring like beasts a great company of hill-trolls out of Gorgoroth... Like a storm they broke upon the line of the men of Gondor, and beat upon helm and head, and arm and shield as smiths hewing the hot bending iron.' (RotK, 'The Black Gate Opens')